Reprisals Dim Hopes For Peace In Mideast

Anti-arab Militant's Son, Arafat Aide Slain In Ambushes

JERUSALEM — Fear of revenge attacks that would further dim prospects for Mideast peace echoed across Israel and the West Bank on Sunday after the son of slain Jewish extremist Meir Kahane and his wife were shot to death and, hours later, a prominent Palestinian leader also died in a hail of bullets.

Binyamin Kahane, 34, who promoted his late father's radical belief in expelling all Arabs from the Holy Land, was killed when gunmen opened fire on his family's van in the occupied West Bank early Sunday. Kahane's wife, Talia, 31, also was shot to death and five of their six children were injured when the van rolled off the road.

A Palestinian group, the Martyrs of the al-Aqsa Intifada, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hours later, Thabet Thabet, a leader of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, was killed when gunmen fired through the windshield of his car outside his home in the West Bank. Palestinian officials insisted it was the latest Israeli assassination of one of their leaders.

The killings occurred as U.S. officials are struggling against time to persuade Arafat to embrace a peace proposal forwarded by President Clinton as part of his efforts to get a Mideast treaty before he leaves office on January 20.

Clinton had set a deadline of January 10 for the two sides to strike a deal. But the Palestinians say it does not meet their needs, that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak appears to be backtracking on some concessions and Sunday's shootings will only make it more difficult for the two sides to compromise.

Israeli officials appealed for calm and said the Israeli army should be allowed to respond to the Kahane killings. But at a funeral attended by thousands of Kahane followers, members of Kahane's outlawed right-wing Kach and "Kahane Lives" movements called openly for revenge against the Palestinians.

"Don't leave revenge for the Lord!" shouted Noam Federman, a spokesman for the Kahane movement, in his eulogy. "It should be every one of us. Take your faith in your own hands. If you don't, we'll all be ducks in a shooting range."

After the funeral, young Kach activists rampaged through the streets of Jerusalem, smashing windows, beating Palestinians and chanting "Death to Arabs!" and "Revenge! Revenge!" After one attack, an Arab couple stranded in their smashed car had to be rescued by an ambulance crew.

The Kahane shootings came a day after the Fatah movement called for two weeks of stepped-up violence against the Israeli occupation to mark the founding anniversary of the faction that is spearheading the 3-month-old Palestinian intifada. More than 350 people, the vast majority Palestinians, have been killed and thousands wounded.

After Sunday's shootings, Palestinian officials said they would continue trying to expel Jewish settlers from their land until Israel's occupation is ended.

"It's a Palestinian right [to target settlers]," said Imad Falouji, the Palestinian communications minister. "There will be no security or stability for any Israeli settler on Palestinian land. We advise them to leave our land peacefully before they leave it in coffins." Fatah's announcement also said that Clinton's bridging proposal in the peace process was "utterly rejected" by the Palestinians. Officially, Arafat has responded only with a letter seeking clarifications in the proposal, which calls for painful concessions by both sides.

In the proposal, Clinton asks that the Israelis give up sovereignty over the disputed Jerusalem shrine known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram ash-Sharif. In exchange, the Palestinians are asked to surrender what they claim is the right of some 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to the homes from which they fled after Israel was created in 1948.

Israeli negotiators have indicated that Barak is prepared to give up control over the Temple Mount. But Barak now appears to be hesitating; he reiterated Sunday that he would "never sign a document" transferring control of the shrine to the Palestinians.

At a Cabinet meeting Sunday morning, Barak tried to step up the pressure on the Palestinians to accept Clinton's deal. He said that if Arafat is not ready to move the peace process forward, then Israel would call another "time out" in negotiations and impose "unilateral separation" on the Palestinians, rather than allow an independent Palestinian state under mutual agreement.

The Israeli army said it did not believe that the Palestinians had specifically targeted Kahane and his family. They were the latest victims in a series of shootings at settlers' and army vehicles on the roads throughout the occupied West Bank. Their shots struck the van while it was passing the Palestinian village Ein Yahoud.